[A/N: I'm still sick, this isn't dropped.]
Well, let's skip forward a little, and one would find the king—Reinhard's father—sitting in stunned silence upon his throne, staring at a magical projection displayed before him. In it, his son, the boy he had disowned and cast out like refuse, was backhanding a Rank Eight warrior as though the man were nothing more than a fly to be swatted aside.
It was truly a shock, something he didn't dare to believe could be real, and yet the sight was right here in front of him, undeniable and irrefutable. He had watched it three times already, and each viewing only made the knot in his stomach tighten further.
His son looked as if he had gone through some kind of rebirth—as if the universe itself had torn him apart and rebuilt him from nothing, sending him back into this world like a god walking among mortals.
The trash, powerless boy the king remembered had been replaced by something unrecognizable, something that radiated an authority so overwhelming it could be felt even through a projection. But regardless of how impressive the transformation was, Reinhard's actions were something that could not be allowed.
For him to take over three hundred thousand people from a single city—citizens, slaves, workers, even guards—and march them out as if they were his to command? Was this not a blatant sign of rebellion? Was this not the first move of someone positioning himself to challenge the crown?
Even if it wasn't a deliberate act of defiance, the king grew deeply uneasy watching how effortlessly so many people had followed Reinhard without question. They hadn't been threatened or coerced—they had simply seen him and chosen to walk behind him.
That kind of natural magnetism, that ability to draw people in without force, was far more dangerous than any army. And on top of that, there was Reinhard's raw strength to consider. A casual backhand sending a Rank Eight warrior through several city blocks… yeah, this didn't look good for his position as king. Not at all.
Adding in how he and the rest of the royal family had treated Reinhard when the boy was growing up—the abuse, the neglect, the open contempt—he doubted very much that Reinhard held any affection whatsoever toward his former family. There was no love there to appeal to, no lingering loyalty to exploit. Whatever bond had once existed between father and son had been severed long ago by the king's own hands.
It was clear. Reinhard was an enemy. And then there was the matter of the sword that Reinhard had enchanted and given to the slave merchant as payment. Naturally, the city lord had conducted a thorough background check on Reinhard after recovering from his injuries, tracing his steps through the city and documenting everything he had done.
This investigation had led back to the slave shop, where the enchanted sword was recovered and appraised. Its properties were confirmed, and the implications of someone being able to casually produce a weapon of that caliber as a throwaway bargaining tool were not lost on anyone.
"The boy is to be treated as if he is a ninth rank," An old voice sounded through the throne room, echoing off the stone walls with a quiet authority that silenced every other sound in the chamber.
The king flinched, then looked over to see the ancestor stepping out from the shadows at the edge of the room. This was humanity's ninth rank—a warrior who had lived for over four hundred years, sustained by the sheer density of mana that permeated his ancient body.
He was an old man in appearance, frail and weathered, but he was the pillar upon which all of humanity rested. The single load-bearing column that held the entire structure upright. If this old man died, every other race on the continent would act almost instantly to erase humanity from the face of the world.
Humanity was feared by all the other races, and for good reason. Their high birth rates gave them numbers that other, longer-lived races simply couldn't match. On top of that, the geniuses that emerged from humanity's ranks could excel across all disciplines and fields, making them the ultimate jacks of all trades.
This versatility allowed humans, as a single race, to be capable of standing against all of the other races by themselves. They didn't need allies the way others did—they adapted and filled every gap.
Dwarves were powerful in their own right. They were undisputed masters of blacksmithing, earth magic, and fire magic—specialists whose expertise in those fields was unmatched by any other race.
But humans could also learn blacksmithing, and while they fell a step below the dwarves in pure quality, they made up for it with innovation and breadth. Humans could learn all types of magic, ranging from basic elemental spells to rare and devastatingly powerful disciplines like space magic and time magic—schools that many other races couldn't even access.
This was the true power of humanity. Sure, they couldn't rival the other races in their given specialties when measured head to head. But they were able to learn from those races, add their own elements and innovations to what they learned, and at times even rival the originals.
They had created enchantment magic specifically to compete with the dwarves' runesmithing, developing an entirely new magical discipline just to close that gap. And they had done similar things across every field, building and adapting and innovating until they stood tall as what many considered the strongest race overall—not because they were the best at anything, but because they were good enough at everything.
"Ancestor, you're joking?" The king asked, his voice cracking with shock. Treating Reinhard as a ninth-rank threat was the highest possible classification, treating his very existence as a matter of survival for the entire human race.
"Someone has foreseen the future and saw this empire split in two by Reinhard's hands. The gods have already acted and plan to begin a summoning, for once the human domain is divided, many of the other races would side with Reinhard against us," The old man said softly, each word landing like a hammer blow. The king's face went pale as the implications washed over him.
"He would go as far as to ally himself with those lesser races?" The king said, shock and disgust warring for control of his expression. His lip curled at the very thought. How could a human fall so low as to side with those races?
In his mind, humanity was the peak of all races, and only truly mighty species like dragons, phoenixes, and beings of similar stature could even hope to claim they were worthy of standing alongside humans as equals. Everything else was beneath them—tools to be used, obstacles to be removed, or resources to be exploited.
"You brought the greatest shame to humanity, and it will damage our holy race forever," The old man said coldly, his voice carrying the sharpness of a blade. The words were directed not at Reinhard, but at the king himself.
The king gritted his teeth so hard that the muscles in his jaw bulged, the accusation cutting deeper than any sword could. He was truly ashamed—not of what he had done to Reinhard, but ashamed to have birthed such a thing.
"Go to the church and assist them in their summons. Reinhard went through a rebirth and caused a crack in reality. Through that crack, the gods will help us summon heroes from another world—humans who will help us defeat this evil you have birthed." With that, the old man turned and walked away without waiting for a response, his final words hanging in the air like a sentence that had already been carried out.
Humanity was loved by the gods. The gods were the very reason that humans had been given a chance to stand in the first place. Humans were talented, that much was undeniable, but in the ancient days, humanity had never been given the opportunity to grow.
They had been suppressed by the other races from the moment they first appeared—crushed, enslaved, and hunted before they could develop enough to defend themselves. But the gods had intervened, lifting humanity up and giving them the tools and the time they needed to flourish.
And even now, centuries later, the gods were still helping, still watching over their favored race. Upon seeing this upcoming danger—this being whose power threatened to shatter the balance of the entire world—the gods had moved to act once more.
Because in their eyes, this was a demon lord. Reinhard was the Demon Lord, even if he had no idea that he had been labeled as such. The king didn't fully understand what the point of summoning beings from another world was, or how strangers from a foreign reality could hope to stand against someone of Reinhard's caliber. But who was he to go against the will of the gods? If they said heroes were needed, then heroes would be summoned. It was as simple as that.
***
Who were the summoned people? Well, where was there a better world to draw from than Earth? The gods sensed that strange, magicless world on the other side of the crack that Reinhard's arrival had created, and in the narrow window of opportunity that the split in reality afforded them, each god managed to select a human they found to their liking—someone whose soul resonated with their particular domain—and quickly pulled them across the boundary between worlds.
This process took time. The gods couldn't simply snap their fingers and have heroes appear—the summoning ritual was complex, the crack in reality was unstable, and each individual had to be carefully extracted without damaging their soul in transit.
With his loyal followers able to tap into his blessings—granting them strength, stamina, and abilities far beyond what their broken bodies should have been capable of, although still far weaker than what Reinhard himself could produce—they were able to work at an extraordinary pace.
Trees were felled, foundations were laid, walls were raised, and structures took shape with a speed that would have been impossible under normal circumstances. Within that window of time, a city began to take form in the heart of the Howling Forest.
Everyone was housed, every last person given shelter and a place to call their own. And what emerged was something that had never existed in this world before—the first city in history where humans, elves, dwarves, demihumans, spirits, and beings of every other race lived together side by side as one unified community. No hierarchy based on species, no racial districts, no caste system separating them. Just people, living together.
Reinhard was currently sitting at a desk in the central building of the new city, drafting a list of laws that he wanted his people to live by. The foundation of his new society needed rules, a framework of rights and protections that would prevent the horrors he had witnessed in that first city from ever taking root here.
For one, he was going to create a set of fundamental rights—something akin to human rights, but broader in scope. It wasn't going to be limited to just humans. He was going to call it the Race Law, a set of principles that applied to every living being regardless of their species, origin, or status. All races were to be considered equal under these laws, with the same protections and the same responsibilities.
Slavery could still exist—he wasn't naive enough to think he could abolish it overnight in a world where it was woven into the very fabric of every civilization—but slaves were no longer going to be treated as beings without rights. That was the line he drew in the sand. A slave going forward would have the right to buy back their freedom through labor or payment.
They would have the right to choose their own owner, and the arrangement between slave and master would be formalized through a binding contract between both parties—one that outlined the terms, the duration, and the conditions under which freedom could be earned. It wasn't perfect, but it was a start. A bridge between the world as it was and the world as he wanted it to be.
The age of consent was going to be set at seventeen years old. Reinhard hadn't arrived at that number easily. He didn't know with certainty what the right age was, as his own frame of reference came from growing up in the United States, where the standard was eighteen. He had wanted to set it at eighteen initially, but he also recognized that around the world on Earth, different cultures had placed the threshold lower.
Japan, for example, had set the age of consent at thirteen—and yeah, that was far too low by any reasonable standard. Sixteen also felt too young in his judgment, even though it seemed to be the rough average across much of Earth.
Adding in the fact that people in this world matured faster than those on Earth thanks to the influence of mana and magic on their physical and mental development, he ultimately settled on seventeen. Why? Because he wanted to ensure that a person's mind had time to develop properly—not just their body, but their judgment, their ability to understand consequences, and their capacity to make informed decisions about their own lives.
He implemented more changes beyond that, each one chipping away at the darkness he had witnessed on his very first day in this world. He outlawed sex work entirely within his city. He didn't do this out of prudishness or moral superiority—he did it because he wanted the people under his protection to value themselves, to see their bodies as their own rather than as commodities to be traded.
And more importantly, he wanted to eliminate the pipeline that funneled desperate, vulnerable people into that line of work against their will. He built orphanages for children who had no parents, ensuring that no child under his care would ever be left to fend for themselves on the streets.
He established a school system open to everyone, regardless of their status, background, race, or history. Education was to be universal—a noble's child would sit in the same classroom as a former slave's child, and both would receive the same quality of instruction until special schools for the rich were built. The list of reforms went on and on, each one another brick in the foundation of the world he was trying to build.
He was setting this world up for a brighter future, laying the groundwork for a civilization that valued its people rather than consuming them. But in doing so, he had become this city's protector—its shield, its symbol, and its greatest deterrent against the forces that would seek to tear it down. This role had limited his freedom considerably.
He couldn't simply wander off to explore or train at his leisure; he had responsibilities now, people who depended on him for their safety and their hope. But he was the one who had taken them from that city. He was the one who had looked into their broken eyes and decided he couldn't walk away. This was the whole reason he was here—to save this world, to protect those who couldn't protect themselves. So he didn't mind the burden at all.
As for the wolves? He had tamed them all, and they were living amongst the people of the village.